Infinite Patience

thoughts on the what, the how, and the why of literature

Edward P. Jones

Edward P. Jones: New Essays is the first book dedicated exclusively to a critical consideration of the entire oeuvre of one of America’s most celebrated writers.

The volume contains an extensive biography of Edward P. Jones, drawn from dozens of interviews and personal essays, as well as two new essays on each of Jones’ books and one short essay on his uncollected juvenilia. I worked on the book throughout 2010 and 2011, writing one-third of its contents and editing the essays that appear in it.

In the process of putting the book together, I compiled a list of publications that I believe will prove useful to future critics of Jones’ work. The list includes all of Jones’ own publications as well as interviews with Jones and other critical analyses of his short stories and novels. In hopes of expanding both Jones’ readership and the critical literature on his work, I have made the list available here.

Works by Edward P. Jones

Arranged in order of publication. Short stories published in literary journals prior to republication in either Lost in the City or All Aunt Hagar’s Children are not listed here.

  • ‘Harvest.’ Essence 7.7 (November 1976): 84, 108-110, 112, 114-115, 128.
  • ‘The Farmers Palace.’ Callaloo 11/13 (February-October 1981): 1-13.
  • ‘Island.’ Ploughshares 9.2-3 (1983): 53-71.
  • Lost in the City: Stories. New York: HarperPerennial, 1992.
  • ‘A Sunday Portrait.’ Picturing Us: African American Identity in Photography. Edited by Deborah Wills. New York: New Press/W.W. Norton & Co., 1994. 34-40.
  • ‘Disappearing.’ Who’s Writing This? Notations on the Authorial I. Edited by Daniel Halpern. New York: Ecco Press, 1994. 98-100.
  • ‘Introduction.’ ‘The Flowers’ by Alice Walker. You’ve Got to Read This: Contemporary American Writers Introduce Stories that Held Them in Awe. Edited by Ron Hansen and Jim Shepard. New York: HarperPerennial, 1994. 580-581.
  • The Known World. New York: Amistad, 2003.
  • ‘We Tell Stories.’ Powells.com. Portland: Powell’s Books, 2003. Online.
  • ‘In the Name of the Mother.’ Essence 36.8 (December 2005): 140-142.
  • All Aunt Hagar’s Children. New York: HarperPerennial, 2007.
  • ‘Introduction.’ New Stories from the South — 2007. Edited by Edward P. Jones. Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2007. vii-xi.
  • ‘Introduction.’ Being a Black Man: At the Corner of Progress and Peril. Edited by Kevin Merida. New York: PublicAffairs, 2007. xi-xvi.
  • ‘PEN/Hemingway Prize Keynote Address Delivered At the John F. Kennedy Library, 1 April 2007,’ The Hemingway Review 27.1 (2007): 7-13.
  • ‘Foreword.’ Black Boy by Richard Wright. New York: HarperPerennial Modern Classics, 2008. vii-x.
  • ‘Disappearing’ (reprint). Who’s Writing This? Fifty-Five Writers on Humor, Courage, Self-Loathing, and the Creative Process. Edited by Daniel Halpern. New York: HarperPerennial, 2009. 98-100.
  • ‘Stamford.’ Illuminating Fiction: Today’s Best Writers of Fiction. Edited by Sherry Ellis. Pasadena, CA: Red Hen Press, 2009. 2-8.
  • ‘Shacks.’ The New Yorker (13 and 20 June 2011): 94.
  • ‘Introduction.’ Lost in the City: Stories: Twentieth Anniversary Edition by Edward P. Jones. New York: Amistad, 2012. xii-xvii.
  • ‘Introduction.’ Notes of a Native Son by James Baldwin. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2012. vii-xiv.

Notable Interviews with Edward P. Jones

Arranged alphabetically by surname of interviewer.

  • Anderson, Kurt. ‘A Public Radio International Program.’ Aspen, CO: Aspen Institute and Fora.TV (7 July 2007). Online.
  • Birnbaum, Robert. ‘Interview.’ Identity Theory (21 January 2004). Online.
  • Burns, Carole. ‘Off the Page.’ The Washington Post (30 October 2003). Online.
  • Burns, Carole. ‘Edward P. Jones.’ Off the Page: Writers Talk About Beginnings, Endings, and Everything in Between. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2008. 64, 162, 191, 194, 205.
  • Champion, Edward. ‘BSS #80: Edward P. Jones.’ The Bat Segundo Show (30 November 2006). Online.
  • Ellis, Sherry. ‘Edward P. Jones: Imagined Worlds.’ Illuminating Fiction: Today’s Best Writers of Fiction. Edited by Sherry Ellis. Pasadena, CA: Red Hen Press, 2009. 9-19.
  • Fleming, Robert. ‘Just Stating the Case is ‘More Than Enough’: PW Talks with Edward P. Jones.’ Publishers Weekly (11 August 2003): 254.
  • Golden, Marita. ‘Edward P. Jones.’ The Word: Black Writers Talk About the Transformative Power of Reading and Writing. Edited by Marita Golden. New York: Random House, 2011. 47-60.
  • Graham, Maryemma. ‘An Interview with Edward P. Jones.’ African American Review 42.3/4 (Fall/Winter 2008): 421-438.
  • Hamilton, William. ‘Edward P. Jones’s City, His Own Known World.’ The New York Times Book Review (31 August 2006). Online.
  • Hurd, Gordon. ‘Interview with Edward P. Jones: From MFA to Pulitzer in 22 Years.’ After the MFA (13 and 25 September 2006): Online (1) and Online (2).
  • Jackson, Lawrence P. ‘An Interview with Edward P. Jones.’ African American Review 34.1 (2000): 95-103.
  • Johnson, Sarah Anne. ‘Untold Stories.’ Writer 117.8 (2004): 20-23.
  • Johnson, Sarah Anne. ‘The Image You Woke Up With.’ The Very Telling: Conversations With American Writers. Lebanon, NH: University Press of New England, 2006. 82-91.
  • Leyshon, Cressida. ‘A Writer in His Own Mind.’ The New Yorker (3 May 2004). Online.
  • Mitchell, Gloria. ‘Meet the Writers: Edward P. Jones.’ Barnes & Noble (Fall 2006). Online.
  • Pinkmountain, Scott. ‘It Gets You Through: The Rumpus Interview with Edward P. Jones.’ The Rumpus (May 2011). Online.
  • Rivas, Dan. ’10 Questions with Edward P. Jones.’ Politics and Prose (July 2004). Online.
  • Silverblatt, Michael. ‘Edward P. Jones.’ KCRW Bookworm (11 December 2003). Online.
  • Silverblatt, Michael. ‘African Americans and Identity in Writing.’ KCRW Bookworm (23 June 2005). Online.
  • Silverblatt, Michael. ‘Edward P. Jones.’ KCRW Bookworm (30 November 2006). Online.
  • Solomon, Deborah. ‘The Way We Live Now: Questions for Edward P. Jones.’ The New York Times Magazine (10 October 2004). Online.
  • Tucker, Neely. ‘The Known World of Edward P. Jones.’ The Washington Post Magazine (15 November 2009). Online.
  • Uncredited Author. ‘An Interview with Edward P. Jones.’ BookBrowse (April 2009). Online.

Book Reviews and Critical Essays on the Works of Jones

Arranged in order of publication of the titles by Edward P. Jones, then arranged alphabetically by surname of reviewer or essayist.

On The Known World (2003)

  • Pinckney, Darryl. ‘Gone With the Wind.’ The New York Review of Books 51.16 (21 October 2004). Online.

On All Aunt Hagar’s Children (2006)

  • Eggers, Dave. ‘Still Lost in the City.’ The New York Times Book Review (27 August 2006). Online.
  • Harrison, John. ‘All Aunt Hagar’s Children by Edward P. Jones.’ The Quarterly Conversation 7 (Spring 2007). Online.
  • Hungerford, Amy. ‘Fiction in Review.’ The Yale Review 95.4 (October 2007): 154-161.
  • Mason, Wyatt. ‘Ballad for Americans: The Stories of Edward P. Jones.’ Harper’s Magazine 313.1876 (September 2006): 87-92.
  • Pinckney, Darryl. ‘Black Wisdom.’ The New York Review of Books 54.5 (29 March 2007). Online.
  • Wood, James. ‘Metaphysical Parenting.’ The London Review of Books 29.12 (21 June 2007): 21-22.

Academic Research Articles on the Works of Jones

Arranged in order of publication of the titles by Edward P. Jones, then arranged alphabetically by surname of first credited article author.

On Lost in the City (1992)

  • Brown, Jessica M. ‘Narrating Washington, D.C. from the Margins: Urban Space and Cultural Identity in Lost in the City and The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears.’ Berkeley Undergraduate Journal 23.2 (2011): 1-35. Online.
  • Kennedy, J. Gerald and Robert Beuka. ‘Imperilled Communities in Edward P. Jones’s Lost in the City and Dagoberto Gilb’s The Magic of Blood.’ The Yearbook of English Studies 31 (2001): 10-23.
  • MacKenzie, Cameron. ‘The City of Being: Space, Trauma, and Identity in Lost in the City.’ Edward P. Jones: New Essays. Edited by Daniel Davis Wood. Melbourne: Whetstone Press, 2011. 93-114.
  • Maucione, Jessica. ‘Neighborhood as the New Lost World in Lost in the City.’ Edward P. Jones: New Essays. Edited by Daniel Davis Wood. Melbourne: Whetstone Press, 2011. 75-91.
  • McCarron, Bill. ‘Most Lost in Edward P. Jones’s Lost in the City.’ Notes on Contemporary Literature 36.2 (March 2006): 11-12.

On The Known World (2003)

  • Bassard, Katherine Clay. ‘Imagining Other Worlds: Race, Gender, and the ‘Power Line’ in Edward P. Jones’s The Known World.’ African American Review 42.3-4 (Fall/Winter 2008): 407-419.
  • Berman, Carolyn Vellenga. ‘The Known World in World Literature: Bakhtin, Glissant, and Edward P. Jones.’ Novel: A Forum on Fiction 42.2 (Summer 2009): 231-238.
  • Dawkins, Laura. ‘Inside and Outside the Master’s House: The Architecture of Power in The Known World.’ Edward P. Jones: New Essays. Edited by Daniel Davis Wood. Melbourne: Whetstone Press, 2011. 117-134.
  • Donaldson, Susan V. ‘Telling Forgotten Stories of Slavery in the Postmodern South.’ Southern Literary Journal 40.2 (Spring 2008): 267-83.
  • Donica, Joseph L.V. ‘Hierarchies of Knowledge and the Limits of Law and Theology in The Known World.’ Edward P. Jones: New Essays. Edited by Daniel Davis Wood. Melbourne: Whetstone Press, 2011. 135-157.
  • Giemza, Bryan. ‘Turned Inside Out: Black, White, and Irish in the South.’ Southern Cultures 18.1 (Spring 2012): 34-57.
  • Harris, Trudier. ‘The Worst Fear Imaginable: Black Slave Owners in Edward P. Jones’s The Known World.’ The Scary Mason-Dixon Line: African-American Writers and the South. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 2009. 174-194.
  • Howard, Jonathan. ‘Their Eyes Were God’s: A Counter-Cartography of The Known World.’ 2009-2010 Penn Humanities Forum on Connections. Online.
  • Ikard, David. ‘White Supremacy Under Fire: The Unrewarded Perspective in Edward P. Jones’s The Known World. MELUS 36.3 (Fall 2011): 63-85.
  • Jackson, Tommie. ‘Slave Patrols in Edward P. Jones’ The Known World.’ CLA Journal 53.2 (December 2009): 162-177.
  • Johnson, Iris Nicole. ‘Contemporary Ownership: The Master, the Slave, and the Self in Edward P. Jones’s The Known World.’ Revisiting Slave Narratives II: Les avatars contemporains des récits d’esclaves II. Edited by Judith Misrahi-Barak. Montpellier, France: Presses universitaires de la Méditerranée, Montpellier III, 2007. 129-154.
  • Marshall, Stephen. ‘Taking Liberty Behind God’s Back: Mastery as the Central Problem of Slavery.’ Polity 44 (2012): 155-181.
  • Mutter, Sarah Mahurin. ‘”Such a Poor Word for a Wondrous Thing”: Thingness and the Recovery of the Human in The Known World.’ Southern Literary Journal 43.2 (Spring 2011): 125-146.
  • Pressly, Thomas J. ‘The Known World of Free Black Slaveholders: A Research Note on the Scholarship of Carter G. Woodson.’ The Journal of African American History 91.1 (Winter 2006): 81-87.
  • Saunders, James Robert. ‘A World of Irony in the Fiction of Edward P. Jones.’ Hollins Critic 44.1 (February 2007): 1-10.
  • Wiksyk, Chelsea. ‘Navigating and Negating the Ownership Fallacy in Edward P. Jones’s The Known World.’ The Albatross 2.1 (2012): 59-72. Online.

On All Aunt Hagar’s Children (2006)

  • Gonzalez, Christopher. ‘Spatialization and Deictic Shifts in Lost in the City and All Aunt Hagar’s Children.’ Edward P. Jones: New Essays. Edited by Daniel Davis Wood. Melbourne: Whetstone Press, 2011. 185-202.
  • Henry, Lorraine M. ‘Mr. Jones’s Neighborhoods: The Triad of Place, History, and Memory in Lost in the City and All Aunt Hagar’s Children.’ Edward P. Jones: New Essays. Edited by Daniel Davis Wood. Melbourne: Whetstone Press, 2011. 161-184.
  • Torday, Daniel. ‘Young Boys and Old Lions: Fatalism in the Stories of Edward P. Jones.’ Literary Imagination 11.3 (2009): 349-365.

Graduate Student Dissertations on the Works of Jones

Arranged alphabetically by surname of dissertation author.

  • Andersson, Tobias. ‘The Development of Henry Townsend in The Known World by Edward P. Jones.’ Lund University, Sweden (Spring 2006). Online.
  • Johnson, Iris Nicole. ‘Acts of Emancipation: Authority and Identity in Contemporary Slave Narratives.’ Texas A&M University-Commerce (Winter 2009). Online.
  • Kermond, Richard. ‘Evil and Suffering in the Short Stories of Edward P. Jones.’ Georgetown University, Washington, D.C. (Winter 2010): Online.
  • Merkel, Julia. ‘What Slavery Does to Whites and Blacks in Edward P. Jones’s The Known World,’ Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main, Germany/GRIN Verlag (2007). Online.
  • Miles, Emily. ‘(Re)Claiming Agency in Language: The Case of the Contemporary African American Slave Narrative.’ Utrecht University, The Netherlands (Fall 2008). Online.
  • Nur Aeni Azeliawini, Amelia. ‘Identity and Alienation of Slave and Slave Master in Edward P. Jones’ The Known World.’ Binus University, Indonesia (Winter 2011). Online.
  • Rooney, Theresa M. ‘Rewriting Boundaries: Identity, Freedom, and the Reinvention of the Neo-Slave Narrative in Edward P. Jones’s The Known World.’ Clemson University, South Carolina (Spring 2008). Online.
  • Ursin, Reanna A. ‘Slavery as a Site of Memory: Interracial Intersubjectivity in the Historical Novels of Sherley Anne Williams, Caryl Phillips, and Edward P. Jones.’ University of Notre Dame, Indiana (Winter 2006). Online.